You’ve done the work.
Mapped your risks. Built fallback plans. Tested your team. Reviewed progress.
Now comes the real challenge: keeping it up.
The first 180 days are about clarity and momentum.
But Days 181 to 365 are about discipline, building a rhythm that doesn’t fade.
If you stop now, resilience decays. If you keep it alive, it becomes how your business operates.
Here’s how to make it stick.
Step 1: Build a 90-Day Sustainment Cycle
Resilience isn’t a one-time project, it’s a quarterly rhythm.
Every 90 days:
- Revisit your top 5 business systems
- Run 1 drill or walkthrough
- Reassign or reaffirm fallback owners
- Update call trees, contact info, and plan summaries
- Review automation logs and backup verifications
It doesn’t need to be complicated. It needs to be consistent.
Step 2: Pressure-Test the Edges
Now that your core plans work, ask:
- What happens if the fallback owner is out?
- Can someone else step in and follow the same process?
- Are any key steps tribal knowledge?
Introduce variation:
- Change the scenario type (natural disaster, vendor failure)
- Change the team running it
- Time it during peak workload
You’re not just testing systems, you’re testing resilience under pressure.
Step 3: Measure Progress You Can Share
Resilience wins don’t always show up in financials, but they do build credibility.
Create a quarterly progress snapshot:
- of drills run
- % of systems with tested fallback plans
- Open issues vs closed issues
- Automation status (e.g., backup testing, MFA coverage)
Bonus: Share it with staff. Let them see what’s improving and why it matters.
Step 4: Promote the Culture
If you’ve built something that works, tell people.
- Include resilience updates in all-hands or team meetings
- Recognize the fallback owner who responded quickest
- Share drill takeaways, even the awkward ones
- Keep it real, not perfect
Culture is built through consistency and communication. This is how you make resilience part of your identity, not just your policy.
Final Note
Day 365 doesn’t mean you’re done.
It means you’ve built something worth protecting.
And the best way to protect it? Keep showing up.
- Run the drill.
- Check the gaps.
- Assign the owner.
- Keep the rhythm.
Because resilience isn’t what you write.
It’s what you repeat.
Ready to benchmark where your resilience program really stands?
Start with a complimentary risk and resilience review
